In her column in the Sun newspaper on April 17th Katie Hopkins described migrants
attempting to cross the Mediterranean as cockroaches and suggested using
gunboats to tow the boats back and burning them (presumably once the migrants had
disembarked), and indeed, in an interview on LBC the next day she suggested
burning all the boats in North Africa.
She has been subjected to much ridicule for these comments,
but, apart from the comparison with cockroaches, it is hard to see much of a
gap between her hate-filled comments and the response of the European Union
with its ten-point plan to the crisis that is unfolding (http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-15-4813_en.htm).
That plan includes a “systematic effort to capture and
destroy vessels used by the smugglers.” The statement refers to the success of
the EU’s Atalanta Operation, which “should inspire us to similar operations
against smugglers in the Mediterranean.” (http://eunavfor.eu/mission/)
The Atalanta Operation was aimed to counter piracy off the
coast of Somalia (http://eunavfor.eu/mission/),
and included arrests of pirates and destruction of boats. The ‘Migrants at Sea’
blog points out, however, that operations against piracy have a clear
foundation in international law, but similar operations against people smuggling
have no such foundation and so may not get the UN mandate they would require (http://migrantsatsea.org/).
Other proposed measures include expanding the area of
Frontex’s Triton operation, presumably so boats will be intercepted closer to
the African coast rather than in European waters, and to work with countries
around Libya, including deploying immigration liaison officers. The effort
seems to be to strengthen the ‘border’ between Europe and North Africa and prevent
migrants from taking to the sea at all, or if they do, intercepting them as
soon as possible and towing them back.
There is the offer of 5,000 resettlement places for migrants
who qualify for protection, but that is alongside proposals to fingerprint all
migrants and for Frontex to establish a rapid return programme for those deemed
to be ‘illegal’.
The 5,000 figure has to be set against the call from the UN
special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Francois Crepeau, for the
wealthy world to agree to take one million refugees from Syria over the next
five years (Guardian, April 23). Rather than make it harder for desperate
people to escape conditions in North Africa and the Middle East, especially
Syria, Europe should make it easier and establish and support safe routes. That
way “you reduce the number of deaths, you reduce the smuggling business model,
and you reduce the cost of asylum.”
This alternative model, however, is unlikely to play to the
ears of European governments, especially in the United Kingdom during a general
election, where the Katie Hopkins view is not obviously unpopular with the
general population. It has been pointed out that comparing the people
attempting to reach Europe to cockroaches is reminiscent of Nazi Germany’s characterization
of Jewish people and others deemed ‘undesirable’ as vermin. Zoe Williams in the
Guardian says Hopkins’ column “recalls the darkest events in history”, and she reminds
us of the genocide in Rwanda where the Tutsis were similarly described as cockroaches
(http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/19/katie-hopkins-migrants-vermin-darkest-history-drownings).
But whatever we think of Katie Hopkins and the Sun newspaper
that published her ‘thoughts’, the fact that the European Union’s response is
almost identical to her policy proposals should make us wonder whether the
political atmosphere around migration and refugees in Europe as a whole means
that the continent has in fact journeyed to the heart of
darkness.